This blog is about The Big Picture - information and insights about what goes on in the world outside our borders - and what it means for Americans. Unless otherwise specified, all photos from Deena Stryker archive.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Stupidest Stuff Ever, TPP, Contrasts and Capitalism with a Human Face

My apologies for having failed to post two weeks' worth of OEN blogs here. I promise to keep this blog more uptodate:

Hillary’s Latest Embarrassment is About ‘Capitalism with a Human Face’ April 27

In the nineteen sixties the Czechs promoted what they called communism with a human face, until Brezhnev ordered Soviet tanks in. Meanwhile, next door, the Hungarian regime was known as goulash communism: both of these efforts were about making communism more acceptable to the man in the street. Central planning, whose purpose was to make sure that wealth was relatively evenly distributed, carried with it a certain number of restrictions. Communist leaders lessened the limits on freedom of movement for professionals and intellectuals, for whom this was important, leaving the majority of the people satisfied that they would never have to worry about the basics.

Under capitalism, the governing philosophy is that the system does not have to ensure that the basic needs of most citizens are met, however the Christian virtue of charity is admired. As globalization gobbles up the land, minerals and forests of the world, foundations like the Clintons’ devote part of their indecent fortunes to helping the victims of their rapacity, making sure children are vaccinated and bed nets supplied, or teaching women how to micro borrow, bringing them into a system which by definition can throw up few winners.

As the pundits exchange opinions about Secretary Clinton’s embarrassing role in her husband’s Global Initiative Foundation, they invariably mention the perception that the Clintons feel themselves to be above the law. In reality, they embody the new corporate state in which the wealthy are allowed live high on the hog as long as they make token gestures to the rest of humanity. But while pundits focus on the sale of favors, the larger picture that should also concern us: neo-fascist parties are the popular version of the corporate state. They show that the hundred year old antagonism between Communism and Fascism that gave rise to the Second World War did not end with the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and Hirohito’s Japan: this struggle will continue until humanity reaches a level of sophistication that renders it moot. The so-called clash of civilizations, though it appears to be about religion, is really about dignity, and dignity is also what the yearning for equity is about.

There appears to be no widespread recognition of the fact that capitalism’s human face obscures its rationalization of fascism. Yet the legally elected president of Ukraine could not have been overthrown without the private fascist militias such as Right Sektor, whose leader Dmitri Yaros became the new government’s head of security. And without an unspoken acceptance of strong-arm techniques, we would not be witnessing fascism in such theoretically unlikely places as Israel and Norway. Israel was meant to guarantee a home to a people that had been slaughtered en masse because of who they were, and Norway is one of the Scandinavian countries that represent the highest level of civilization attained by humans. Norway has an anti-immigration fascist movement, while some Israelis joined the thugs in the Maidan and recently others called for the death of Palestinians in a yearly march through Jerusalem’s remaining Arab neighborhoods.

What is most disturbing about the rise of fascism is not the existence of popular movements, but the use of the legal system to justify it or disguise it. In the late nineteen seventies a county court judge ruled that parading the swastika in Skokie, Illinois, would not constitute a deliberate provocation to the Holocaust survivors who lived there, and that neither the Nazi uniform, nor the printed materials the Nazis intended to distribute as they marched through the town, would ‘incite violence’. The United States’ legalistic approach to freedom of speech and of expression (as when you express yourself by marching under a Nazi banner…) has so thoroughly penetrated the rest of the world that thirty-five years after Skokie it is divided between “I am Charlie’s” and “I am not Charlie’s”. Just as the American Supreme Court’s unquestioned authority allowed it to put over the absurd idea that corporations are people, the absolutist definition of free speech has infected intellectuals across the world, who righteously believe they stand between civilization and barbarism. As angry exchanges continue over the Charlie incident, I have not seen any media reports on the non-absolutist definition of free speech that emanates from the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights:

<blockquote> Article 10 – Freedom of expression

1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.</blockquote>

The difference between the European Convention on Human Rights and the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights is that the latter fails to balance rights with responsibilities: Americans are told that because they are free to act, they are responsible for their own well-being, and herein lies the crucial difference between the American definition of freedom and the legacy of the French Revolution. Why is the legacy of a violent, bloody revolution more nuanced than that of a country that came into being through a war of liberation? Perhaps the difference lies in the emphasis the first American settlers placed on the individual’s right to converse with God, as opposed to the commitment of French revolutionaries to human/human solidarity.

The notion of solidarity is immanent in the conflict over Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons. As I was writing this, Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd talked to the creator of the cartoon Doonesbury, Gary Trudeau, for whom “some Charlie cartoons wandered into the realm of hate speech.”

Todd: “Are the victims responsible for the tragedy?”

Trudeau: “No, but I didn’t agree with the decisions they made, which brought a world of pain to France. (A world of pain! Such a down-to-earth notion!) I wouldn’t draw pictures of the prophet, but I’ve often drawn the Taliban, the PLO , etc., without provoking reactions.”

The supersession of individual sensitivities by legal decrees extends far beyond the definition of free speech. By replacing the conscience of individuals with legal pronouncements, cowboy capitalism, alias globalization, leads us to believe that what we are seeing is not really fascism, only something that looks like fascism — like the difference between its movie renditions and historical reality. Americans need to realize that the fanatic pursuit of power inevitably leads to the fanatic methods we are witnessing on the part of our government. No less, knee-jerk rejection of The Other spawns Hitler-worshipping parties that gradually will spread from Europe across the globe. The Golden Dawn in Greece is the Empire’s arm against the Syriza Party, that stands up to international financial bureaucracies and private banks. And Angela Merkel’s German powerhouse needs the anti-immigrant Pegida Party as a counterweight to southern Europe’s rejection of northern Europe’s austerity medicine, boldly embodied in Spain’s Podemos Party, that could rise to power in December elections.

When threatened, capitalism, the preserve of the few, reaches for the fascist fist in its battle against the many. And because the arrow of time is irreversible, when a trend is well under way, it continues until it reaches a bifurcation point, which, in politics we call revolution.

Contrasting Attitudes Toward Minorities - April 23

In one of those frequent ironies that dot the world landscape today we can only be struck by these contrasting events: as America’s black population becomes increasingly organized and determined to confront police brutality toward its members, Europe’s leaders mourn the deaths of 1700 African migrants trying to reach its shores via the Mediterranean, the South African government chastizes its people for targeting immigrants and on the hundredth anniversary of the slaughter of 1.5 million Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, Turkish President Erdogan lashes out at the Pope for calling it the first genocide of the twentieth century.

What do these strikingly different attitudes tell us about attitudes toward Otherness upon which political and religious systems rest? While recently revealed American police reports refer to black demonstrators as ‘enemy forces’ and ‘adversaries’, mirroring not only recent police militarization but a heritage in which minorities are fair game, Europe’s politicians, though determined to limit African immigration, are forced by a heritage that goes from the French Revolution to the UN Declaration on Human Rights to deplore mass drownings and seek ways to avoid them.

This stark difference underlies the growing divide between Washington and those it took for granted as allies for three quarters of a century, mainly the Europeans. But I also see a difference between mainstream America and the black majority population of South Africa that after only a few decades of rule, is already telling its less tolerant members that the bible says ‘Love they neighbor’ and ‘God loves us all’, while Australians have set up a grass roots campaign condemning the concentration camps their government has set up for illegal immigrants from Asia.

Clearly, the US is behind on this one, but our focus on elections has little chance of remedying attitudes that began with the first slaughter of Indians.

The TPP isn't Only US Worerks' fight - April 22

The United States, which has invaded many countries with the excuse of protecting ‘American lives’ is leaving thousands of US citizens stranded in Yemen, as it descends into civil war.

RT is running a State Department briefing in which the usual suspect, an AP reporter named Matt, takes on a new, male briefer and elicits the following reply: “For fifteen years the US has been advising its citizens to delay travel to Yemen, and if they are in Yemen, to leave.” Matt couldn’t get the briefer to admit that the US was telling its citizens that they are on their own.

Yesterday I wondered, in a tweet, whether these were Arab Americans, and it turns out that indeed, they are mostly Yemeni Americans. Today, pesky Russia has evacuated some of them by air.

It wasn’t enough that Moscow gave asylum to Edward Snowden - or that the US ordered that the plane of Bolivarian President Evo Morales be denied overflight permission in Europe on suspicion he was carrying Snowden to Cuba - an incident that, among others, inspired Morales to reaffirm at yesterday’s hemispheric summit Latin America’s determination to reject once and for all American interference. Now, as knives are being sharpened to attack presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, we have her successor at State, John Kerry, leaving Americans stranded in an area that has repeatedly been declared ‘vital’ to American interests, in the midst of a civil war being fought by our proxy, Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, our client state Ukraine has declared both communist and fascist propaganda illegal, bringing in a priest to purify the vacated Communist seats in the parliament. The move was probably sparked by US pressure to tone down the fascist demonstrations of the Right Sektor whose muscle helped bring down the legally elected president last year, but if anyone - starting with Raul Castro - doubts that socialism is still anathema to the US government, they should think again. France 24 showed President Obama rubbing his eyes at the Panama Summit in a gesture of fatigue. It couldn’t have been due to jet lag, and my strong suspicion is that he was simply out of his element in the summit’s pro-peace, pro-liberation and pro-people discussions.

Stupidest stuff Ever - April 12

The United States, which has invaded many countries with the excuse of protecting ‘American lives’ is leaving thousands of US citizens stranded in Yemen, as it descends into civil war.

RT is running a State Department briefing in which the usual suspect, an AP reporter named Matt, takes on a new, male briefer and elicits the following reply: “For fifteen years the US has been advising its citizens to delay travel to Yemen, and if they are in Yemen, to leave.” Matt couldn’t get the briefer to admit that the US was telling its citizens that they are on their own.

Yesterday I wondered, in a tweet, whether these were Arab Americans, and it turns out that indeed, they are mostly Yemeni Americans. Today, pesky Russia has evacuated some of them by air.

It wasn’t enough that Moscow gave asylum to Edward Snowden - or that the US ordered that the plane of Bolivarian President Evo Morales be denied overflight permission in Europe on suspicion he was carrying Snowden to Cuba - an incident that, among others, inspired Morales to reaffirm at yesterday’s hemispheric summit Latin America’s determination to reject once and for all American interference. Now, as knives are being sharpened to attack presidential candidate Hillary Clinton over Benghazi, we have her successor at State, John Kerry, leaving Americans stranded in an area that has repeatedly been declared ‘vital’ to American interests, in the midst of a civil war being fought by our proxy, Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, our client state Ukraine has declared both communist and fascist propaganda illegal, bringing in a priest to purify the vacated Communist seats in the parliament. The move was probably sparked by US pressure to tone down the fascist demonstrations of the Right Sektor whose muscle helped bring down the legally elected president last year, but if anyone - starting with Raul Castro - doubts that socialism is still anathema to the US government, they should think again. France 24 showed President Obama rubbing his eyes at the Panama Summit in a gesture of fatigue. It couldn’t have been due to jet lag, and my strong suspicion is that he was simply out of his element in the summit’s pro-peace, pro-liberation and pro-people discussions.

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The alternative press is replete with despair and ‘hope’, neither of which is helpful. ‘Squawking’ may alleviate some of the pain Americans experience at being identified with a government that brutalizes Others at will, but it doesn’t change the ‘facts on the ground’. As for hope, it is an easy cop-out: in the present state of the world, we can never be certain that tomorrow will come. Whether a barefoot child in Africa or a hedge-fund manager, all of us are the potential victims of hubris.

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About Me

Born in Philadelphia, I studied in Paris, became a French citizen by marriage, debuted at Agence France Presse in Rome, then, as Deena Boyer, followed Fellini’s creative process for The Two Hundred Days of ’81/2’. The proceeds from this book enabled me travel to Cuba to to interview Fidel Castro for a major French weekly, meeting with him again a week after the Kennedy assassination and several times in 1964 for a book, Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young, in which the other members of the government (including Che Guevara, Raul Castro and Celia Sanchez), tell in their own words why they made the revolution. My Cuba archive is on-line at Duke University.

In the seventies, I did graduate work in Global Survival, taught at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and was a speech writer in the Carter State Department, publishing an article on U.S.-Soviet relations in the in-house journal in 1976.

Returning to Paris in 1981, with assistance from the Centre National du Livre, I published Une autre Europe, un autre Monde, the only book that foresaw the reunification of Europe and the breakup of the Soviet Union. I returned to Philadel-phia in 2000, and have been a contributor and senior editor at various on-line journals.

A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness hopes to change the way both seekers and skeptics look at good and evil - -and at the daunting problems of the 21st century. It shows that religious belief is not necessary to achieve serenity, but that awareness of the sacred as confirmed by modern science, is. It does this by viewing the world as a system and exploring what that means for the role of politics.

America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World is a primer for Americans and others who find the policies of successive US governments difficult to square with their image of the country and its founding documents. The decades I spent living on both sides of the Iron Curtain provided me with a unique awareness of America’s image abroad and of the mainstream media’s failure to convey news and ideas to the voters in whose name policies are carried out. References to work by other political writers illustrate little-known or forgotten features of American history that have contributed to the tragic face the country presents today.

Cuba 1964 provides the definitive answer to the question: “Was Fidel Castro a Communist before he carried out the revolution, or did he become one because of the way the United States reacted when he ousted pro-US dictator Fulgencio Batista? While following day by day events, I had extensive conversations with the men and women who had joined the Castro brothers as early as 1953 and were now members of the revolutionary government. Together with Fidel, Raul, Che and Celia Sanchez, they told me in their own words why and now they made the Revolution hat continues to inspire countries in Latin America and around the world. The text is illustrated with photographs from my black and white archive which can be seen on-line at Duke University.

Lunch with Fellini Dinner with Fidel: How did it happen that a fourteen year old American girl found herself living among the French in post-war Paris? The answer to that question also explains why I went on to live in half a dozen countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain, becoming mutti-lingual, writing first about the cinema, then about ‘the big picture’ while raising two children, mostly on my own. A religious grandmother and a hedonistic lover accompanied me on a journal which has been both spiritual and political, and is illustrated by many photographs from my personal album.